Telecoms manufacturer Ericsson has today issued an interim update to its annual Traffic and Market Data Report, which reveals that global Mobile Broadband subscriptions have grown by 60% year-on-year and are now close to a total of 1 Billion. By comparison global mobile penetration has reached 85% (Q4 2011) and mobile subscriptions now total around 6 Billion.

The growth in mobile internet traffic is also highlighted. Ericsson states that mobile data traffic has doubled between Q3-2010 and Q3-2011, while quarterly growth between Q2-2011 and Q3-2011 hit 18%. Mobile data first surpassed voice traffic in Q4-2009 and became double that of voice for the first time in Q1 2011.


The traffic generated by mobile PC users is said to vary "widely" between individuals and markets, yet Ericsson estimates that the global average is now around 2GB per month. Elsewhere Smartphones are said to account for only around 10% of the worldwide installed base of subscriptions, although 30% of all handsets sold in 2011 were Smartphones (up from 20% in 2010).

European Satellite supplier Skylogic ( Eutelsat ) has today launched its new 'Tough 20 Tooway Broadband Challenge', which pledges to install their 'up to' 10Mbps capable Tooway™ service in 20 of the toughest locations (i.e. remote rural areas) across the UK. Better yet they'll offer it as a FREE service, at least for 2012.

Skylogic is already understood to be inviting local authorities to suggest the toughest locations and will announce the first places "in the coming weeks". At this stage it's unclear which UK based satellite ISPs have been selected to deliver the service.


The service will be delivered via Eutelsat's Ka-band based KA-SAT (9° East) spacecraft, which was successfully launched into space during late December 2010 (here) and finally entered commercial operation in May 2011 (here). Councils wishing to suggest sites for the challenge are invited to contact Lorraine Jones to register their interest at ljones@rscassociates.net .

Mobile operator Orange UK (Everything Everywhere) has reported its latest Q4-2011 financial results, which revealed that they had successfully managed to stop the bleed of fixed line Home Broadband subscribers at 713,000 (the same as Q3-2011).

In addition the operator has also successfully migrated its fixed broadband customers from their old legacy LLU network and on to BT's platform, which has apparently lowered operating costs and not a lot else.

Recent History of Orange's UK Home Broadband Decline
Q3-2007 1,142,000 (Highest Point)
Q3-2010 795,000 (-347,000)
Q4-2010 770,000 (-25,000)
Q1-2011 726,000 (-44,000)
Q2-2011 716,000 (-10,000)
Q3-2011 713,000 (-3,000)
Q4-2011 713,000 (0)

Orange's Home Broadband subs have been falling for years and "plans to turnaround the fixed BB business" (i.e. envisaged a return to customer growth from mid-2011), which were first announced at the end of 2010 (here), have often seemed overly optimistic. Suffice to say that Orange have yet to show any growth but that could now happen when the Q1-2012 results arrive later this spring.


It's good to see that Orange has finally stemmed its Home Broadband decline, although they're not out of the woods yet. One of the problems is that many people do not perceive Orange as being a provider of Home Broadband services, although recent marketing efforts have begun to change that perception.

A quick glance at the groups future strategy shows that their goal is "significantly increasing Smartphone penetration and growing data revenues". Over the next 3 years both Orange and T-Mobile aim to invest more than £1.5bn to improve network speed, reliability and coverage. Not a word about fixed line services.

Most of the markets most successful ISPs have something that their rivals don't, such as low prices, superfast broadband services, cheap bundles, strong TV products and more. By comparison Orange has price on its side and a less than perfect history in other areas (e.g. support, service quality etc.).

Clearly more needs to be done. If Orange is to become truly successful again then it will need to step up its game and stop treating home broadband services as an afterthought. The new generation of superfast broadband services and YouView based IPTV solutions might be a good place to start but they'll need to take it seriously, assuming they take it at all.

The latest biannual global H2 2011 Allot MobileTrends Report from Allot Communications has revealed that Mobile Broadband data traffic grew by 83% in the second half of the year (CAGR of 234%) and is dominated by video streaming, which accounted for 42% of all usage (up from 39% in H1 2011); the popular YouTube video sharing site alone was responsible for 24% of total broadband traffic (up from 22% in H1).

However, the fastest growing applications were VoIP and Instant Messaging (IM), which grew by 114% (up from 101% in H1). It's interesting to note that the File Sharing (P2P) growth rate is in decline, gaining 29% compared to a 33% growth rate in the first half of 2011.


The data also shows that Skype continues to account for the lion's share of global mobile VoIP bandwidth (79%), yet this actually represents a decline from 82% in H1. New VoIP entrants, such as Viber, ooVoo and Tango, seem to be eating away at Skype's share (Viber already accounts for 2% of global mobile traffic).


Apparently Facebook Messenger is now an all-time "killer app" on mobile after having risen from zero to 22% of total IM traffic in just four months. But mobile traffic for Facebook (social network) itself grew by 105%, which is sharply down on the 166% seen during H1.

Meanwhile traffic from the Android Market (Smartphone App Store) grew by a phenomenal 232%, which is four times faster than Apple's admittedly much more established iOS App Store (61%). But the iOS App Store still dominates 79% of related traffic, while Android Market holds just 18%.

The important thing to take away from this is that overall growth continues to be heading in a sharply upwards direction. Allot's results are a useful mirror for Cisco's recent and much more detailed Mobile VNI report.

The governments Communications Minister, Ed Vaizey, has today announced a new £180 Million fund to help the 3% of UK homes (760,000 households) that could find themselves being unable to view Digital Terrestrial Television (DTTV) as a result of interference from the new generation of 4G superfast Mobile Broadband services.

At present the 800MHz (790-862MHz) radio spectrum band is currently being used for old analogue television (TV) services, although by the end of 2013 it will have been re-purposed for use by a new generation of LTE (4G) based mobile internet connectivity.

Unfortunately many existing DTT receivers and aerials were designed to receive signals across the UHF Bands IV and V (470-862MHz), including the whole of the 800MHz band, which is likely to cause interference.


The money will apparently come from mobile operators that bid for the spectrum as part of Ofcom's related 4G auction in Q4-2012. Some homes could be given up to £10k to help them find a solution, although that's likely to be extremely rare.

In most cases the money will go towards covering the cost of a special filter, switching to a different TV platform or changing aerial. Ofcom will shortly begin a new consultation on how best to implement the scheme. Extra support to fit the filters will be available to the over 75s and people who are registered disabled.

UPDATE 22nd Feb 2012

Added the full quote from DCMS's official press release.

CityFibre Holdings, a provider of fibre optic infrastructure ( FTTH ), has suggested that a lack of flexible investment models could be holding back the rollout of ultrafast fibre broadband ISP services in the UK and preventing it from becoming a true alternative to "legacy incumbent infrastructure" (i.e. copper line based internet services).

CityFibre's Head of Corporate Development, James Enck, pointed to the recent global ranking of ftth deployments that didn't even list the UK. Enck claims that most of the successful FTTH countries have benefitted from "a third source of investment" (e.g. via the utilities industry or entrepreneurial investors etc.).

Enck believes that the UK, outside of a few smaller projects (e.g. Hyperoptic , Rutland Telecom etc.), has been left "lagging behind the rest of the world" because the government's "over zealous" approach to taxation and funding has left a vacuum that only incumbent (e.g. BT etc.) operators seem able to fill.


But sadly there's no real sign that the government intends to change its current course, at least not in any truly meaningful way. Some recently proposed changes to the controversial Fibre Tax could deliver a tiny improvement (here) but that's about it.

James Enck does at least point to a more positive future and predicts that it "won't be long before 10Gbps to the home becomes a reality," although at present that simply isn't viable. Consumers today can barely manage to take full advantage of 50Mbps, let alone 10,000Mbps! But technology does move fast and in another ten years the story might be very different.

Enck also reminds us that the UK is only "in the early stages of learning as to what the wider long-term socio-economic benefits of symmetrical fibre connections might be". It could in theory have profound implications for transport, the environment, social service delivery, healthcare, education and business but you have to rollout the service out first.

Mobile operator Three (3) UK has today released a new open letter, which is supported by several leading consumer and business groups (e.g. FSB, CMA, Which? etc.), that calls upon the governments Communications Minister, Ed Vaizey, to "support an even greater reduction in data prices" for people who use a Mobile Broadband (Smartphone, Laptop etc.) connection while travelling abroad (roaming) within the EU.

The European Commission (EC) has already outlined a new set of proposals that should make it "significantly" cheaper to surf the internet while roaming away from the UK (Summary of the EC's Roaming III Proposals). The European Council is expected to take a crucial vote on this soon. But today's letter warns that the new measures do not go far enough and would still result in "prohibitively expensive" roaming (e.g. 1GB of EU data would cost around £400, compared with about £10 in the UK).

The Open Letter

UK must lead call for lower international roaming charges

Dear Minister,

In the next few weeks a vote will be taken by Europe’s communications ministers that will determine how much consumers pay for accessing mobile services when they are abroad until 2022.

The biggest risk surrounds the pricing levels that will be set for consumers using data on their phones when they are on holiday or away on business.

Although the European Commission’s ‘Roaming III’ proposals that are due to be voted on will reduce the cost of data year on year, by 2014 they will still see a rate tantamount to £400 for 1GB of mobile data, compared to UK domestic prices of under £10.

At the root of high retail prices are the wholesale prices operators charge each other. If the maximum amount one operator can charge another at the wholesale level is limited, competition between operators will lead to lower retail prices for consumers.

Yet the Commission is proposing a wholesale cap more than 10 times higher than domestic retail prices. This means that if the proposals become reality, using the internet on your mobile phone in Europe could end up costing more than the trip itself. This is an issue for consumers and businesses alike. Large, and particularly small businesses, feel the effects of the cost of downloading data and many place tight restrictions on the use of mobile devices by their executives when travelling abroad. It is prohibitively expensive and, in the worst case scenario, stops firms from doing business abroad entirely.

Data usage on mobile devices is exploding and the Commission’s proposals in their current form do not address the demand for data in 2012, never mind 2022. These pricing levels do not encourage competition and hence could put the brakes on growth and competition in the EU.

There is another way.

MEPs have tabled amendments that would see the wholesale price reduced to less than 10 euro cents per MB (down to around 5 euro cents per MB at the end of the three year glide path). We urge you to use your vote in the European Council to support an even greater reduction in data prices for people and businesses travelling abroad.

Yours sincerely,

* Prof. Neil Hoose - Federation for Small Businesses
* David Dyson - Three UK
* Steve Weller - uSwitch.com
* Jacqui Brookes - Federation of Communication Services
* David Harrington - Communications Management Association
* Nick White - INTUG
* Richard Lloyd - Which?

The current EU Roaming Regulation is due to expire on 30th June 2012, yet both the European Parliament and EU Council must approve the replacement regulation before that happens. In reality this leaves precious little time for significant changes.

Likewise the EU doesn't want to risk damaging the market, especially at a time when local economies are already under serious financial strain. Clearly something needs to change and the new regulation will make EU data roaming a lot more affordable.

The EC's proposed changes will reduce wholesale prices, introduce a new retail cap and bolster competition by allowing customers to sign up for a cheaper mobile roaming contract (i.e. separate from their contract for national mobile services!).

Sadly it could be many more years before prices on the continent catch-up with local rates and a lot longer before they match the UK specifically, especially since we have some of the cheapest mobile data rates in the world. Whatever happens, it's good to know that the price of data will fall.

The NextGenUs project in Cumbria, which hopes to bring "county-wide" superfast broadband ISP services to the regions rural areas via a mix of fibre optic and wireless (FiWi) connections (here), has threatened Cumbria County Council (CCC) with legal action if it attempts to award taxpayers money from the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office to BT .

The council was last year awarded £17,130,000 to help it deploy broadband services into rural areas (BDUK Funding Allocations). The funding is supposed to help 90% of "people in each local authority area" gain access to a superfast internet service (25Mbps+) by 2015 (the last 10% will only get a minimum speed of 2Mbps).

NextGenUs claims that the market, without public subsidy, already has "firm plans" to deliver such services. Its own Cumbria FiWi project, which is supported by an investment of more than £1 Million, is currently connecting up the Eden District and plans to expand county-wide are already said to be "in place" (crucially we note that this will still depend upon "community demand").


The stance has also picked up support from the MD of West Sussex focused wireless ISP Kijoma, Bill Lewis, whom has apparently "been challenging West Sussex County Council over their blatant pro-BT stance for years". Regular readers might recall that Kijoma's service was also absent from the WSCC's initial maps of rural broadband coverage, which incorrectly made the towns and villages that they serve show up as "Not Spots" (i.e. areas of poor or no broadband connectivity).

It's easy to see why some alternative network providers get so miffed. Thankfully those maps were eventually removed but the risk of market distortion remains.


Meanwhile the Cumbria County Council originally shortlisted three operators to help bring better broadband to the county, which included many of the usual big boys (i.e. BT, Cable & Wireless (C&W) and Fujitsu) and none of the small fry.

In fairness councils do face somewhat of a dilemma. Many smaller ISPs operate closed networks and do not offer wholesale solutions to rivals, which appears to exclude them (BDUK Framework Rules) from public subsidy (we note that the Welsh Broadband Support Scheme, which offers grants to locals with poor connectivity instead of ISPs, found a way around this). At the same time councils often view smaller operators as more of a gamble.

At the time of writing CCC has yet to award any of the BDUK funding to a supplier, although so far the bulk appears to be pointed in BT's direction; nobody would be surprised if Cumbria followed that trend. NextGenUs are unlikely to launch a challenge until after the council has made its decision (supplier choice).

The London-based High Court of Justice has today ruled that The Pirate Bay website, which claims to be the world's largest BitTorrent (P2P File Sharing) tracker with 3-4 million "users", allows internet copyright infringement (piracy) to take place. The move paves the way for broadband ISPs to be forced, Newzbin style (here), into blocking the site.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which claims to be a representative voice of the UK recorded music industry, recently attempted to strong arm BT into expanding its block of Newzbin2 to "voluntarily" include The Pirate Bay (here). At the time BT refused and said that a "court order will be needed before any blocking could begin". Today the BPI got their wish.


Justice Arnold is expected to issue a further ruling in June 2012, which will almost certainly require BT to block The Pirate Bay. It's then highly likely that Virgin Media , Sky Broadband and TalkTalk will all be asked to follow suit (just as happened with the Newzbin case).

As yet none of the UK ISPs have attempted to challenge the court via a recent set of rulings from the European Court of Justice. The ECJ warned that it would be illegal for ISPs and websites to impose systems for the filtering and blocking of electronic communications in order to protect copyright (here).

In reality neither Newzbin nor The Pirate Bay would make the best test cases for that ECJ ruling because they're already politically too hot to handle. Meanwhile the government, ISPs and Rights Holders are still trying to develop a Voluntary Code for handling such situations, which could surface before the end of this month (Communications Bill).

The important thing here is that such cases are being correctly conducted through the courts. Any future system should ideally follow by example, so as to ensure that unlawful blocking does not take place. At this point we probably don't need to remind our readers that such blocking is ultimately pointless (easy to avoid).

UPDATE 21st Feb 2012

The Open Rights Group has issued the following response to the high court ruling that The Pirate Bay and its users infringe copyright.

Global networking solutions provider, Brocade, has suggested that Ofcom's recent move to the delay the auction of 800MHz and 2.6GHz radio spectrum, which will be used to help support the next generation of 4G superfast Mobile Broadband services, could be a "blessing in disguise" because it will allow more time for the UK's "unprepared network infrastructure" to be upgraded.

The communications regulator now intends to hold its auction in Q4-2012 instead of Q1-2012, although Ofcom remains optimistic that the delay won't "have a material impact on the timeline for the availability of new services to consumers". The first commercial 4G services have always been expected to surface towards the end of 2013 or early 2014.


Jewell fears that, without such a delay, the new 4G services would completely swamp "the UK's outdated networks" and repeat the mistakes of 3G's implementation in this country. In fairness the 4G situation is somewhat different and Ofcom's delay only seems to apply to its auction and not service availability.

The government dramatically overcharged for 3G and then operators didn't know what to do with it (video calls anyone? 50p a minute!). By contrast Mobile Broadband has now been established as a viable consumer service and demand is already pushing the limits of 3G tech; 4G is fast becoming a necessity.

Computing magazine PC Advisor has published the results of its latest annual Home Broadband Survey 2012, which received responses from roughly 6,000 people and ultimately named Zen Internet as the Best ISP.

But Zen wasn't the only winner. The BT-Infinity service picked up an award for Best Super-Fast Broadband and PlusNet took home the gong for Best Budget Broadband provider.

BEST SUPER-FAST BROADBAND - BT-Infinity .
Reliability satisfaction: 95.3%
Peformance (download speeds) satisfaction: 95.2%
Tech support satisfaction: 93.1%
Customer satisfaction: 91.9%
Overall satisfaction: 97.3%
Would recommend: 89.9%

BEST BUDGET BROADBAND - PlusNet .
Reliability satisfaction: 94.9%
Peformance (download speeds) satisfaction: 85.4%
Tech support satisfaction: 97.4%
Customer satisfaction: 98.3%
Overall satisfaction: 97.3%
Would recommend: 91.1%

BEST ISP - Zen Internet .
Reliability satisfaction: 98.9%
Peformance (download speeds) satisfaction: 92.2%
Tech support satisfaction: 99.4%
Customer satisfaction: 98.8%
Overall satisfaction: 98.9%
Would recommend: 97.6%

Unfortunately not everybody did so well. Orange only managed to score 68% for overall satisfaction and just 64% of its customers said they would recommend the ISP. Meanwhile TalkTalk saw a far stronger satisfaction rate of 89.7%, yet oddly just 65.8% would recommend them. Concerns over connection reliability appear to be the main cause of trouble.


Meanwhile Virgin Media UK, specifically its cable broadband service(s), probably deserves a mention as their overall satisfaction score of 96% placed them just outside of award territory (89.4% said they'd recommend Virgin).

The UK coalition government's controversial and hugely unpopular £2bn Communications Capabilities Development Programme (CCDP), which threatens to expand existing ISP based internet snooping laws (data retention) to cover more than just your basic email and website access logs, now looks set to be officially proposed as part of this year's Queen's Speech (May 2012).

The CCDP was first revealed in July 2011 (here) after being hinted at in the government's October 2010 Spending Review (here). The proposals represent a revival of the previous Labour government's hugely unpopular Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP).

Labour's IMP was ultimately shelved over criticism of the fact that it would have allowed too many public bodies to have access to the data, which could have resulted in abuse. Everybody from local councils to the NHS and even Royal Mail might have been given access. But since then the security services (MI5, MI6 etc.) are understood to have lobbied hard for its revival in the CCDP.

At present a voluntary code already requires broadband ISPs to maintain a basic log of their customers email and website accesses, but not the content of your communications, for a period of up to 12 months. By comparison the new plan would be more mandatory and could expand its cover to include social networking sites (Facebook etc.), online role-playing games (World of Warcraft etc.) and even Instant Messaging (Twitter, MSN etc.).


A report in The Telegraph suggests that the government would store direct messages between Twitter subscribers and even communications between online video gamers (all of those are private, just like emails). But at this stage the official policy has yet to be outlined and as a result much of this remains highly speculative.

Some solace should be taken from how the government states that its system would track the "who, when and where" of each message, which means access logs and not the content of your communication. The government apparently began negotiations with ISPs and internet firms almost two months ago.

As before, it's expected that ISPs and internet firms would need to manage the data logs themselves, which caused some cost concerns before and is likely to do again. The security services would also be granted "real time" access to phone and ISP logs of people they wanted to place under surveillance.


The move risks running contrary to the coalition governments own May 2010 commitment to "end the storage of internet and email records without good reason", although they claimed last year that the CCDP approach is "not about developing new, more intrusive powers". Few will see it that way.



The UK Internet Service Providers Association ( ISPA ) has this week also called for the new proposals to be "proportionate, respect freedom of expression and the privacy of users, and are widely consulted upon in an open and transparent manner".

Ultimately we'll have to reserve judgement until the official policy document surfaces, which will show precisely what the government has planned. Meanwhile the criminals will probably find ways to mask and encrypt their communications anyway (e.g. VPN etc.).

Suffice to say that the CCDP will face many obstacles, not least with the technical and legal challenges of gaining access to such logs from overseas firms / services.

UPDATE 20th Feb 2012

A BT spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk: "This is for the Government to comment on. BT adheres to all legislation applying to its activities and co-operates fully with law enforcement agencies."

UPDATE 21st Feb 2012

An article on ZDNet reveals that the ISPA has not "been directly told" about the new policy, which isn't uncommon as the government often initially engages with larger ISPs in isolated of the ISPA itself. This frequently happens when discussing big policy issues.

However, ISPs would not be able to help with the governments expanded data gathering remit, which requires a separate engagement via the affected internet companies (e.g. Facebook, Twitter etc.).